Christina López is a dynamic, eloquent Chicana from the barrio in Phoenix, whose working-class family has roots in the Southwest that predate U.S. borders.

She has been an organizer since her youth. As a member of the Chicano student group MEChA, she worked against a racist English-only law in Arizona.

After moving to Seattle, López was drawn to the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) by its emphasis on fighting for racial liberation as an essential component of building class solidarity. She has spread this message and challenged racism through extensive work defending immigrant rights, affirmative action, and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Her deep involvement in the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006 and 2007 included opposing the profoundly flawed “guest worker” bill. She has spearheaded protests against police brutality and worked with Somali women to protest FBI raids.

In jobs ranging from production at Revlon Cosmetics to county court clerk and library associate, López has been a member of several unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Recently her activism in the Occupy movement has extended from Philadelphia to Seattle, where she helped pass a “cop-free zone” resolution at the general assembly.

Today, at 43, López is Seattle Radical Women (RW) president. She has been key to building RW's Sisters Organize for Survival campaign, which has fought state budget cuts and layoffs of public workers for the past three years. Radical Women is affiliated with FSP on the basis of a shared socialist feminist program.

López battles for reproductive rights as a passionate feminist of color and led RW's collaboration with Black feminists in Jackson, Miss., to defend the last abortion clinic in the state. She has pinpointed the special impact of war on women and children and the need for the anti-war movement to prioritize this issue.

She is the author of the forthcoming RW position paper “Estamos en la Lucha: Immigrant Women Light the Fires of Resistance,” which focuses on the impact of U.S. immigration policies on women and children and highlights the central role of immigrant women in this country and internationally.

Her passion for racial justice helps her guide the National Comrades of Color Caucus, a joint caucus of the FSP and RW.

As candidate for vice president, López will be a fierce partisan of the downtrodden.